Life, sketchbook, travels

Holiday journal, 1

A break from the distant past of 2015 to the last holiday we took a few months ago. We’d gone to Sri Lanka, but as you’ll see from my drawings, events conspired to make the holiday more about the hotel room than the place.

“Here we are, in a neighboring country that looks and feels familiar, but such a different vibe, such a different sense of people.”

We’d planned to go to all these places that I’d drawn in the map, but I ended up in the hotel at Bentota the whole time, because Orin fell ill and only recovered the day we were leaving for Delhi. These are some drawings done on the road.

01_meal

On this trip I started using water-soluble color pencils for the first time, and really enjoyed moving away from lines to shadows. (Forgive the quality of these images, my scanner is broken so there’s a big glare in all the scans.)

These drawings done in Kandy Botanical Gardens were the first ones where I was trying to figure out how to use color pencils.

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Discovered the writing of Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking on this trip.

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“You have to pick the places you don’t walk away from.”

And the same is true of people, I think.

Part 2 coming next.

And by the way, I used a Kaagazi sketchbook and loved it. Will be definitely using more of their books now.

Angry Soo

I don’t often get angry anymore, and in my middle age it’s mellowed to almost non-existence (though Orin thinks otherwise). In the last few years I’ve found that drawing my anger out is a more constructive way to deal with it. letters home 04

“Pema you have to help me get rid of this black ball of anger. On a good day like today.”

At the time I was reading The Places That Scare You by Pema Chodron at the time, sent by my friend Indira. It was amazing for me and I would recommend it if you’re looking for something to help you deal with emotional turbulence.

Life, People, sketchbook

Our labor story

Really, there’s no drama. Millions of women give birth everyday, and like everything else in my life, I just happened to document it, that’s all.

Mostly because I wanted to preserve the memory of my experience, and also to check that my drawing skills hadn’t flown out (along with all the unexpected amount of blood I’d lost)!

About a couple of weeks into motherhood, I groggily managed to draw this out while the pipsqueak was sleeping.

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01 Feb 2015 04:00 AM | My water broke and jerked me awake. Thanks to the internet I could easily figure out what was happening. The brown boy was ready to panic, but I calmed him down saying it was probably a false alarm. We called Dr. Rai and though she said we should go to the hospital, I decided to go back to sleep until a decent time, and by 07:00 AM, we were at Fortis with our overnight bag.

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At the hospital, everything was peaceful and organized. The nurses were sweet. They hooked me up to monitors to check the foetal heart beat and put me on a drip. The resident doctors examined me, and we were on our way to having this baby! In the morning I went around the room doing yoga poses, all geared up for a normal delivery. The brown boy giggled through a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory. The rest of the day passed slowly and nothing much happened. I ate chocolate and listened to the Emperor Waltz on loop. Later on in the day, the contractions started and we began monitoring them. I have a pretty high threshold for pain so it was just about bearable.

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06:00 PM | By the evening, there was no progress! We were all geared to spend the night in the labor room. Then the foetal heart rate dropped, and dropped again. A worried Dr. Rai suggested that we should do a C-section since it’s a “precious pregnancy” (another term for an elderly mom, i.e. me).

07:45 PM | They strapped me on to a stretcher and all that, like an usual surgery. Dr. Rai’s crew introduced themselves to me. Then Dr.Rai said, we’re going in! Lots of activity went on behind that green curtain. I had local anasthesia so it wasn’t painful (then) but I tried not to look. The brown boy needed to hold my hand, he was so stressed. But it was really the shortest 15 minutes of my life – within minutes they brought out this little squealing mini-me. Then I passed out.

When I woke up, this is what we had: little squealing baby Orin.

Part 1 | Part 2

Life, sketchbook

38 weeks/2015

Those nine months were of course transformational, and not just in body. Slowly I got used to the idea of giving up some control over myself. Here are some pages from the sketchbook at 8 weeks and 12 weeks. But as personal growth, I called it my year of spirituality.

These are some pages at 38 weeks, when I took out some time to document what I was thinking:

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Things that I will miss: People being nice.

“Are people being nice because they are, or because I’m pregnant?”

And that was practically the only thing I could think of! Here we are sitting in a Starbucks, only because they have decaf.

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“Did not think these days would ever come! The last few empty days of our lives…so much has changed, not least my waddling walk!”

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“But how did I keep my sanity through change? Being the sort of person who always fights against it, making transitions much harder than they have to be.”

“Well, I’m not proud of it…”

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“Well, mainly it was the demanding project that kept me super occupied. The Vedanta podcasts were the most calming element of these turbulent times. And also Kindle in it’s many formats.”

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“Of course there were surprises.

This amazing miraculous human body. Really I could bow down to the phenomena of it; if only I could bend.”

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What really helped: Friends and family. Even the most misogynist of people, i.e. me, who would avoid human contact if she could, had to concede to this. Prashant, Indira, the brown boy, my sister and my nephew, and family friends 2π and Snehasis.

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[Aside: I was reading Enchanted Objects by David Rose and thinking, we need new shapes for tangible technology. I really cannot keep drawing these “flat rectangular slabs of glass”. A fabulous and inspiring book if you’re interested in technology and design.]

In retrospect:

Soo: “Even my (drawing) style is the same…you would think this transformation…”

The brown boy: “Hahaha…you have to work harder than that!”

And by the way, I went into labour less than 48 hours after drawing these pages!

Letters Home Part 1 | Letters Home Part 3

art, Life, sketchbook

To Amrita

Back in 2014, the brown boy and I used to have this painting by Amrita Sher-Gill hanging in front of our bed and I had just finished reading Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life by Yashodhara Dalmia.

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“I wish I could be in this Amrita Sher-Gil painting. Everyone is so calm and restful – a calm that I have lost, and would dearly love to get back.

Oh Amrita, your paintings are so much calmer than your own life. Is that a sign that life is always more chaotic than art?

Yours truly, agitated Soo.”

Life, sketchbook

Letters Home

This is a series that begins from 2014, drawings that I wasn’t able to share until now, until I was able to grow a necessary sense of detachment from then.

01: Frontispiece

Looking back, I must have been terribly grumpy when I started this book! Was I not drawing the happy memories from that time? Was I only using the sketchbook to work out my darknesses?
letters home 01

02: Wednesday

letters home 02

“The whole day. It really wasn’t bad. I was doing my own idea and it was going well. But there’s this utter sense of discontinuation that is no one’s doing.

I guess I am always meant to be a loner among peers.

I miss a lot of people who are away. And wish we could go on a holiday.”

03: Feels like someone else’s life

letters home 03

“That body I must take care of. At least I’ve lost this need to be cool. You must be so happy, and I a different person. Feels like it’s someone else. Oh this bloody heat!”

A little clue that I had just become pregnant then. And scared of children, scared of giving birth and scared of being a mother!

04: Another Sunday

Why was I making such a big deal about being pregnant? You know half the country can get pregnant, since they have the necessary apparatus. In my case, though I didn’t smoke in college (because I wanted to have a healthy baby when I was 25) I never really wanted to have children. I did not like them, I was scared by their non-verbal communication, and intimidated by the general unpredictability. However sometime around my thirties I started being more open to the possibility, probably because we started acquiring nieces and nephews, and the brown boy is a complete and utter baby person. Around 8 weeks, I finally started getting more used to the idea that I was growing a new human being!

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Another Sunday that I spent mostly in my own head. Thinking a lot about my 30-year-old relationship with my body. And my imagination reducing slowly but surely.

I should be happier, I know. So many good things are happening.

05: Monday

Friends are such a great support. Here’s Anitha:

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Anitha: Do things that make you happy.

Me: But what? So hard to find something like that…

Anteater: Or you’re already doing happy things, like me?

06: 8 weeks baby hungry little tadpole

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Helpful books, advice and food from 2pie and Snehasis.

People, sketchbook

Encounters of the human kind

When I was younger I was dead scared of talking to people. I used to be terribly quiet and painfully awkward in social situations – but over the last few years circumstances have made me more open to human contact. Here are a few such encounters worth recording.

“I would love to see your blog! Can I meet you in Noida?” said a beautiful stranger in a lovely blue dress at the airport. But of course we didn’t.

One day in the office cafeteria I ate sandwiches with Jabba the Hut who I used to be scared of, years ago when I’d joined Adobe. And promptly remembered the quotation…
jabba

Some days every encounter is unique enough to remember.

But there are some that really stand out and I make sure to draw them before I forget.

Here’s a lovely conversation I had with Ripul, in Bangalore last year, which was interesting though we had crossed paths decades ago, we had never really “met” in person! Among other things, we talked about design and business, the power of networks, our graduate studies, and our respective employers.
ripul

Then, a few months ago I spent a day with dear friends Mishta and Anirudh, who influence me greatly, then and now, and I had to quickly catch that time on paper before it was lost.
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But the best encounters, conversations, meals have been with these people, around this mythical table…even if some of them are not in my life anymore… dinner

People, sketchbook

Phil

It’s almost a year ago that I became a Design Manager at Adobe. Like everything in my life I took it very seriously and questioned the life out of the role.

On a trip back to the mothership, I met with Phil Clevenger, Design Director. Here’s some advice he had for me, among others, that I immortalized in drawing:

[Phil]

“Do something that keeps you happy everyday.”

And this is one for the dark days, when you’ve done all you can:

“Cut yourself some slack. Let some people go.”

sketchbook, travels

Flying

When I travel, I usually have two choices: to stress or to philosophize. To counter the effects of the the first, I start drawing, and thus ensues the second without any conscious effort.

Airports: The best places to watch and draw people. The placelessness alleviated by signs of culture in the food and in the washrooms, voices, customs, signage. Rushing about doesn’t help in drawing and got a few new white hairs from Lufthansa’s delayed flights.

Airports_spread_b

I was reading Reclaiming Conversations by Sherry Turkle and engaging in a lot more conversation with fellow travelers.

“I am on my sabbatical” and negotiations on the cost of holidays.

“I’m going to a conference on the future of printing – not on paper.”

“I like to take a shower between connecting flights.”

“Hey! You can’t break the line because you’re going to miss your flight!” said a spiffy but rude first class traveler going to Chicago and Atlanta.

“I go to Gymnasium” said a seven year old Nicolas from Germany, who was traveling all by himself.

I was thankful to get some peace and time to sit and draw and be at one with myself.

Airports_spread

Airports_spread_z

In Munich I had currywurst and coffee and thought about judgement:

“Judgement is an escalator. Easy but avoidable.”

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After a point, the drawing, the relative imprisonment, and the food and drink always forces me to take some well-earned rest.

This time however I was looking forward to some cheese that did not materialize.

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On the way back I was lucky enough to get an extremely amusing companion who made me laugh the entire journey.

And as always so happy to return home and be reunited with the brown boy and our little tornado.

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Life, Reflection, sketchbook

Parenting, and your sense of self

parenting

Transcript

Getting out of your comfort zone always brings with it a loss of identity and the last one for me was becoming a parent. Suddenly you’re thrown to the deep end, everything around you, losing the floor beneath your feet. Not only your body, your hormones, your sense of time and also your relationships, your mental makeup, your creativity and your sense of self. Everything you knew how to do, suddenly becomes harder. On non-existent, like creativity. Or sleep. It’s easy to hide behind the baby – but you really owe it to yourself to get it back or you might lose it forever. 18062017.

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Life, in drawings

Category Archives: sketchbook